


The Voodoo Doll

by Eros_bittersweet



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 04:32:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13023294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eros_bittersweet/pseuds/Eros_bittersweet
Summary: Mike has been given a doll by his friend Dave as a super-embarrassing birthday gift. He quickly realizes the doll has strange magical powers over him; though Dave, a hard-nosed rationalist, is skeptical of this possibility. A modern re-tread of the King Midas and Daedalus myth.





	The Voodoo Doll

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: coarse language; references to sex; some violence; death.

 “Thanks,” I was saying to the bank teller, shakily, as I clutched the edge of the counter. Please, I thought. Please don’t ask me any more questions.

“Didn’t I just see you here this morning?” she asked, her eyes quizzical.

“Yes,” I croaked, trying to still my torso from the shivering convulsions which racked my body. “I, ah, um, forgot something super important in the safe.”

“Oh,” she said, looking me up and down, concern written all over her face. “You look a bit distraught about it, to be honest. Sure you’re all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, tucking my hands under my arms. “I’ll feel better after I get what I came for.”

“Sure,” she said, nodding to me. “Well, then.”

She handed off the teller station to her coworker, then disappeared into a back room where it seemed to take an eternity for her to reappear with the key. I followed her down a labyrinthine corridor. Was it my imagination, or did we turn left three times, then right three times? Wasn’t that impossible? My senses must be playing tricks on me, I thought. I was literally going crazy; it wasn’t just a fear, but reality.

“Here we are,” said the bank teller, swinging open the armoured door. She handed me the key to my compartment. “I’ll be right outside,” she said.

My frozen fingers could barely hold the key as I fumbled at the lock, and my lungs felt as though they contained no air whatsoever. As I slid open the safe deposit box, I inhaled deeply, as if for the first time in hours. “Oh,” I gasped. And as I stared at the miniature version of myself, identically clothed in the black jeans, white shirt, and red Chuck Taylors I wore that day, I swear I saw an expression of relief pass over the doll’s inert eyes, brown like my own, and its freckled skin flushed pink.

“Fuck,” I cursed, fumbling with the bank box. I nearly dropped it. Then I collapsed to my knees, as my back registered the sensation of slamming against hard metal. I winced, and tried to contain my audible expressions of pain.

“Still all right in there?” Called out the teller.

“I’m great,” I wheezed, as loudly as I could. “Be right out in a minute.”

 

* * *

 

“Dave,” I was pleading into the phone, sitting on a bench outside the bank, the evil simulacra of myself nestled under my jacket. “Dave, buddy. Fuck, I need help.”

“What’s wrong, Mikey?” Dave replied, sounding not at all concerned. “Still nursing that birthday hangover?”

“No,” I said, curtly. “It’s that gift you gave me. I don’t know what kind of fucking deal with the devil you made with someone, but it’s freaking me out. I want you to take it back.”

“Slow down,” laughed Dave. “I knew it would mess with your head, seeing mini-you in the flesh. But you are taking this waaaaay too seriously. You need to come off of whatever you’re taking. Isn’t it better than finding out your latest sidepiece is knocked up with the real thing?”

“You don’t get it,” I said, wiping my sweating palm against my jeans, and then switching the phone to my other ear. “I tried to lock it in a safe at the bank.”

“You…what?” laughed Dave. “Oh my God. Why’d you do that?”

“This sounds crazy,” I muttered into the phone. “I put the thing on the shelf, after my birthday party, after you gave me a fucking doll version of myself at the fucking bar in front of all the guys. Some sick sense of humor you have. And then I was looking at the thing, and it was so goddammed creepy, the fact that it looked so much like me, it made me sick. So I tossed it across the room, and I swear to you,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper. “I swear, Dave, it felt like I’d broken my own back when it hit the ground.”

Dave was silent. “Mikey,” he said, slowly. “Mikey, bro. You need to get over here. I don’t know what the fuck is going on in your head, but this shit ain’t normal.”

“Yeah,” I said, trembling. An older woman looked at me sympathetically as she passed by and I scowled at her, hoping she’d leave me alone. “You’re right. I’m literally going insane, aren’t I? _Fuck_. I’ll drive right over. And then you’ll probably have to take me to the psych ward.”

“Sure you’re all right to drive?” inquired Dave.

“I got here just fine,” I said, “and there’s no way I’m carting a doll around on the public bus.”

Dave snorted. “While that would be a hilarious sight to see,” he said, “I’m worried about you. See you soon.”

* * *

 

I pulled into Dave’s driveway twenty minutes later. I looked around to make sure no one was watching, and then, cursing to myself, unbuckled mini-me from the passenger side of the car. It was humiliating, having to treat this doll like a fucking real-life child. I felt my own torso constrict as my hands clasped around its waist, lifting it from the car, and so I adjusted my hands, cradling it like a newborn kitten as I stomped past Dave’s front door and into his garage, where I knew I’d find him.

Dave was in his usual state of creative madness when I walked in; he paused in his arc welding, as the last sparks of white-hot light jumped from the electrode holder towards the metal component he worked upon. His pet project was in pieces around him, a jumble of steel and wire animal limbs awaiting a body. “Hey, man,” he greeted me, slapping me on the back. I nearly fell over. “Jesus, Mikey,” he said. “Take a seat. You aren’t joking around, right?”

I nodded.

“Let me see the thing,” he said.

I realized, with shock, that when he held it, I didn’t feel the same sense of being battered by invisible forces as I did when I handled it.

“Christ,” I cursed.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Let me see it again,” I muttered. I took the doll, and gasped as I felt invisible hands clench around my ribs.

“Give it back here,” said Dave, his face perplexed.

“It’s only me,” I gasped. “It’s only when I hold the damn thing that I feel-”

“What?” asked Dave.

“Anything I do to that possessed thing, I-I feel like it’s being done to me,” I stammered out.

Dave pulled up a chair and sat across from me, letting out a long sigh. “Bro,” he said. “I guess this is my fault. It was supposed to be a joke. I thought it would freak you out, a bit, that’s all.”

“What have you done to the thing?” I demanded. “I mean, you made it? You painted it to look like me?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “All the customized action figures I make for people - it was just like another one of those. Um, I guess, I didn’t mention that Faye saw it.”

“So what if she saw it?” I frowned. “So long as you didn’t let her put one of her bullshit magic spells on it, what do I care that my ex saw it?”

“She took it,” Dave said seriously. “She wanted it for one night.”

“Whatever,” I said. “The girl’s insane. I always knew she was a lunatic. I think that’s why the sex was so good.”

“She was fine, before you dumped her,” countered Dave. “I never understood why she put up with your cheating in the first place, but she wasn’t gung-ho with the Pagan magic stuff before then. I think it kind of broke her.”

“It was an open relationship,” I protested.

“That’s not what she told me,” returned Dave.

“Fuck,” I cursed. “I didn’t come here to play he-said-she-said about my psycho ex. I know you have no choice to see the crazy bitch, but just don’t talk to me about it.”

“She’s my business partner,” said Dave. “I know – bros before hos and all, but without her money I wouldn’t have financing for my robotics prototype.”

“I still don’t get why she wants YOU to build her a robot,” I said. “There’s like a million companies doing more impressive things than building some stupid mechanical cow who can walk through a maze.”

“It’s what she wants me to build,” shrugged Dave. “And I’m happy to do it. So what’s your problem with it?”

“My problem,” I snarled, “Is this goddammed doll is fucking _cursed,_ or something, even if I don’t believe in that shit.”

“I still think that part’s in your head,” said Dave. “It’s like some guilty conscience thing, or something, making you hallucinate. Remember what you said to me, at the bar, before I gave you this? I was on the fence, to be honest, about handing it to you, because I knew you’d be embarrassed. I knew it would be funny, and maybe you’d appreciate all the work I put into it, but I thought maybe I should save it, give it to you later in private. But in that moment – man, I thought you really could use some perspective.”

“The perspective of giving me a weird-ass doll version of myself in public?” I said. “What the hell did I say?”

“You were explaining why it’s ok for you to cheat on girls,” Dave said. “I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on this, but beforehand I just always thought you were, like, kind of selfish, not that you were so…mean.”

“Oh, boo hoo, I hurt some chick’s feelings,” I muttered. “Was that what I said?”

“No,” replied Dave. “You said, and I quote, that girls don’t really have feelings, that they’re just about the same thing as sex dolls, only the challenge of getting them in the sack makes it more exciting. They only want someone good-looking, to use for sex or money, and they don’t really feel hurt, so why bother being faithful?”

“It’s true,” I shrugged. “I get chicks all the time, and I give them what they want, for a time, until I get bored and then I move on. I’m sure they don’t cry over me. So what’s wrong with that?”

“Faye did,” countered Dave. “Faye sure cried over you.”

“So go fuck her yourself,” I snapped. Dave flinched.

“It’s not like that,” he said. “I’m not going to mess around with my business partner.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I just need you to help me out, here. If you do shit to the damn voodoo doll, it doesn’t seem to hurt. So whatever is going on with it, I don’t care what it is, I need you to destroy it for me.”

 “Fine,” said Dave. “It seems a shame, after all those hours of painting, but if you feel that way about it, sure. So, what do you want me to do?”

“Burn the thing,” I said. “Burn it.”

“Right,” said Dave. He fired up the blowtorch. “Let’s do a test patch,” he yelled through his welding mask. “Right foot first.”

He touched the white-hot-light to the shoe of the doll’s right foot, which ignited in flame. And my right foot was burning, and I was leaping out of the chair, and screaming in agony, and rushing towards Dave, still wielding the blowtorch. “FUCK!” screamed Dave. “You’re going to fucking KILL yourself if you run at me like that.”

Through my blinding agony, I wrestled the doll out of Dave’s hands, and streaked over to the sink. I threw the doll into the basin, and turned on the tap, drowning the doll’s foot in water. I collapsed to the ground, howling in pain, and ripped off my shoe to find the flesh beneath smouldering. I bent over my own blistering skin, sobs wrenching my body.

“Shit,” said Dave, wide-eyed. “No way.”

And then suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. My eyes bulged as I reached out to Dave, beseeching, but I couldn’t talk. The sink, I thought. The sink was still filling with water. I had to get the doll out of the sink. I gesticulated wildly, and tried to stand, but my foot wouldn’t bear weight.

“What is it, man?” said Dave, quietly. “I can’t understand you.”

The sink, I thought, as I looked up at him through my tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m calling the ambulance. You’re scaring me.”

As the darkness descended over me, I could still hear the water running in the sink behind me, overflowing the basin and splashing on the floor.

_911,_ I heard through Dave’s phone, as he knelt beside me. _Please state the nature of your emergency._

Dave hesitated for a very long time as he hovered over me. I heard his words as though from far away.

"I don't know," he said.

 


End file.
